Dell 9530 HDD question

Hi Everybody, this may be a very stupid question so please bear with me.

I'm heavily considering picking up the XPS 15 9530 in the next few weeks as it seems to offer the best bang for the buck laptop that is powerful + slim/light+ nice solid construction.

While weighing options it's looking like the mid-tier with the 1tb HDD + 32gb mSATA is my best bet, but I'd like to go full SSD so I plan on upgrading both drives. I've read a lot of posts where it seems that people are having to go through a lengthy process to upgrade the mSATA as the boot drive, what with Windows licensing issues when transferring things from the HDD.

What I would like to do is go with a 250 or 500gb 840 EVO SSD to replace the HDD (use it as my boot drive) and say a 250 SSD mSATA as a secondary drive and using the stock 1tb HDD to put in an enclosure and use it as a back up device/storage.....would that be an easier route to take? Since all I'm doing is cloning the HDD and I wouldn't have to worry about messing with BIOS set ups.

If not, what's my best bet for an all SSD set up that is as hassle free as possible (would rather not go for the full top tier model.)

 

Without the Windows licensing issues (e.g. fresh reboot of the OS), I would recommend buying a 250GB or 500GB mSATA SSD and a HDD of your choice. Basically, you will put Windows on the mSATA and use the HDD as backup storage. Kind of like what I have. The nice thing about the older XPS is that I can have 3 drives.

EDIT: In the BIOS settings, you can choose which drive to boot first. In this case, you can make the mSATA SSD boot. You don't want to waste the mSATA port for anything else besides it being the OS.

 

Why is that? Is there a performance or reliability advantage to using the mSATA port?

Thanks

edit: Ideally, I'd like to just clone the HDD to a new SSD, add that then replace the mSATA with a larger unit.

 

The mSATA is good for the OS because it is just as fast and reliable as a normal SSD, in a smaller form factor. I am getting 500+ MB/s on my Samsung EVO mSATA SSD. If money is not an issue mSATA + SSD is the best option for performance. If not mSATA + HDD if you would like storage.

 

Ok cool.

Since I'll be replacing both to an all SSD set up it shouldn't really matter which I have as the boot drive right?

If that's the case, I don't need to change the boot settings in the BIOS and can I still keep Rapid Start/Share on the upgraded mSATA?

 

That is right, it shouldn't matter. They are both very fast since they utilize the SATA III 6Gb/s speeds. I am not sure about the Rapid Start/Share stuff though. With the speeds of SSD, I am not sure whether you will need them.